Bionic Dues is a tactical, turn-based roguelite with mech customization. Out-think wide-ranging tactical situations featuring robots with bad GPS, terrible aim, insecurity, a lack of focus, a tendency to backstab, and dozens of other maladies to exploit.

Reviews

“Top game moment: Realising a momentary oversight has condemned you to almost certain doom, but then, with only a perfect set of well-thought long-contemplated moves, you pull everything out the bag, blow the rig, and get the hell out of dodge to receive a hard-earned mission successful.”
8.5/10 – Richard Nolan, Strategy Informer

About This Game

Robot rebellions should be quelled by the best of the best. When the best of the best are killed... it's up to you. Subdue the uprising in time, or your corporate overlords nuke the city.

Bionic Dues is a tactical, turn-based roguelite with mech customization. Guide multiple classes of Exos through a variety of missions filled with enemy robots that are as buggy as they are angry. This is at least as bad as it sounds. Explore for loot, destroy key robotic facilities, and brace yourself for the final attack by your enemies... just as soon as they can pull it together.

Features

Out-think wide-ranging tactical situations featuring robots with bad GPS, terrible aim, insecurity, a lack of focus, a tendency to backstab, and dozens of other maladies to exploit.

Over 40 unique bots, ranging from the hilariously inept-but-dangerous DumBots, BlunderBots, and BatBots to the terrifyingly effective WyvernBots, DoomBots, and MurderBots.

Carve your own path: choose 30 to 50 missions out of the 120 you discover as you explore the city map. Which missions you choose determines how prepared you will be for the final battle against the massing robot army.

Missions come in 23 different general flavors, and are entirely procedurally-generated like a floor of a traditional roguelite.

Mix and match your squad of four from six classes of Exos: Assault, Siege, Science, Sniper, Ninja and Brawler. Each has its own build and weaponry.

Choose an overall pilot from a roster of six to add a powerful perk that lasts your entire campaign.

Customize your four Exos with procedurally-generated loot that grants weaponry and defensive upgrades, new abilities, and more.

Difficulty levels ranging from quite casual to incredibly hardcore.

Save and reload your game with ease any time, or tough it out in ironman mode.

Stellar soundtrack by composer Pablo Vega, headlined by the game's title theme "The Home We Once Knew."

System Requirements

Windows

Mac OS X

SteamOS + Linux

Minimum:

OS: Windows XP SP2 or later

Processor: 1.6Ghz CPU

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Graphics: Screen resolution at least 720px high, and 1024px wide.

Hard Drive: 300 MB available space

Minimum:

OS: Mac OSX Intel CPU and "Leopard" 10.5 or later.

Processor: 1.6Ghz CPU

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Graphics: Screen resolution at least 720px high, and 1024px wide.

Minimum:

OS: Ubuntu 10.10 or later, although other unsupported distros may work

scratches the turn-based tactical itch, with diablo-style itemization in a novel gameplay setting. an underappreciated gem.

7/10

pros+ items, items, items - good variety, good utility; always upgrades at every corner+ different mechs/engineers play quite differently+ world map decisions actually require planning and strategy+ mission types offer a decent variety of challenges, even if there's a lot of overlap

cons- beginnings of games are kind of brutal until you get a few upgrades, then it tips into 'way too easy' when you can one-shot most everything- lack of variety in enemy tactics. sure the different bots do different things, but you tend to approach most situations similarly (either AoE or single pulls)- lack of variety in graphics - all missions have the same tileset...gets old after the first game- items only improve numbers (damage, ammo, etc) and don't add anything special

At first this seemed like the perfect game for me: A roguelike with a tactics and strategic aspect on top of it.Unfortunately all the missions play very much alike and the game gets repetitive fast. Also, the loot is quite boring, since it's just an unending stream of similiar equipment with slightly different numbers. This also means that way too much time is spent between the missions comparing all these slight differences. Maybe some people like this aspect, but i don't. The loot should have been less frequent but more significant.I also question the aesthetic consistency of the game. It's very very ugly and the music is incredibly cheesy. The menu music seem straight out of some cheap anime movie.

Not my thing. I expected a team strategy game, I got a turn-based roguelike dungeon crawler where you control one mech at a time and swap them out like they are stances or armor sets as opposed to actual units.

After getting over my confused expectations, I still found the game lacking. It's closer to a puzzle game wherein the goal is to maximize use of your resources (ammo, health, etc) to clear the boards in hopes of collecting loot you can use in upcoming missions.